'Saul David has already shown himself to be a first rate historian, now he proves to be a masterly story-teller...'

Bernard Cornwell

About Saul

Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and the author of several critically-acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction.

His history books include The Indian Mutiny (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature), Zulu (a Waterstone's Military History Book of the Year), and Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport (an Amazon History Book of the Year). Alan Furst commented in the New York Times Book Review: 'Tense and riveting...This is the achievement of a masterly, first-rate historian.' The film rights for Operation Thunderbolt were bought by Hollywood's Participant Media and used in the making of the motion picture 'Seven Days in Entebbe' which was released worldwide in the spring of 2018. The film is co-produced by Working Title, directed by José Padilha, and stars Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl and Eddie Marsan.

Saul's latest work of non-fiction, The Force: The legendary US/Canadian Special Operations Unit that carried out Mission Impossible, will be published in the autumn of 2019. It has already been optioned for adaption into a TV mini-series.

Saul has also written three bestselling historical novels, Zulu Hart, Hart of Empire and, published in 2018, The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders.

Saul is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham.

In a separate interview, José Padilha told the Hollywood news site ‘The Tracking Board: ‘The movie is based on a well-researched book by Professor Saul David, an English professor, and he spent like 10 years researching this, and he wrote the book telling the story like this, inter-cutting between what’s happening in Israel, what’s happening inside the terminal, and also what’s happening in the military side of things. So I tried to be faithful.’ Click here to read the full interview

Nice of José Padilha to acknowledge the central role that Saul’s book played in the making of his motion picture ‘7 Days of Entebbe’. He said: ‘There’s been a recent book written by British historian Saul David that we based the screenplay on. [It contains] years of research… and, basically, Saul argues that the operation was successful because of the terrorists’ Click here to read the full interview

Saul will appear at Scarborough’s Books by the Beach Literary Festival with crime writer Denise Mina at 5.30pm on Friday 13 April 2018. He will be talking about his new novel The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders. Click here for details

Saul’s next TV appearance is discussing Tudor military warfare on England’s Forgotten Queen: The Life and Death of Lady Jane Grey, a 3-part BBC4 documentary presented by Helen Castor. It airs on Tuesday 9th, Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th January at 9pm.

The trailer for the feature film Entebbe, made using Saul’s book Operation Thunderbolt (and for which Saul was the historical consultant), has just been released by distributor eOne: Click here to watch

The film, starring Rosamund Pike and Daniel Brühl, will be screened in UK cinemas from 9 March 2018. It’s also being released in the US as 7 Days in Entebbe from 16 March 2018:Click here to watch the US trailer

Saul has presented and appeared in history programmes for all the major TV channels and is a regular on Radio 4. Visit the Broadcasting page for a full list of credits. In 2018 he features in a three-part BBC4 series on Lady Jane Grey and presents a two-part documentary on the aerial conflict in World War One, The War Above the Trenches, for UKTV Yesterday Channel and RMC Découverte (France).